A group of ambitious, young local developers is taking on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn and local youth employment accelerator Harambee with a digital platform that matches talent with employers.
The start-up, Skills Blackboard, says its objective is to connect unemployed talent using the platform and it is focused on using tech to help reduce joblessness.
There is a growing number of unemployed people in the country, with South Africa’s unemployment rate at 35.3%, with 7.9 million people being unemployed.
The situation has been exacerbated as the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey, released last month, shows that in addition to the unemployed, SA’s working-age population increased by 140 000 people, while approximately 400 000 previously not economically active people re-entered the workforce.
Skills Blackboard, co-founded by Jacqueline Govender and Ashanti AI, says this motivated the team to launch the platform.
“There is no local platform to showcase or match graduates, as well as students to internships, learnerships, work-based learning and jobs,” notes Govender.
“There is no platform that identifies the skills shortfall for candidates in order for them to upskill or improve their qualifications. This inspired us to build a national skills database to assist the unemployed and South Africa’s talent.”
Explaining how the platform works, she says: “Once a job spec or opportunity is uploaded, the platform analyses the work experience, skills and education or qualification of this role. The platform then scrapes the integrated web platforms and our CV database, which will then match education, experience and skills on the CVs to the job spec or opportunity. The platform scores the candidates’ CVs and creates a shortlist of the best matched candidates.”
Govender says while Skills Blackboard aims to rival LinkedIn and Harambee, her platform is different.
“LinkedIn has functionality that matches posted jobs to the profiles of their members and notifies the members of the jobs posted. Our platform uses data science to match the education, skills and experience of candidates to the job specification posted. Our platform then scores the candidates and provides a shortlist of the best-suited candidates.
“Harambee has matching algorithms and is a recruiter. We are not a recruiter or an employer, we are an enabler. Our key focus is to increase employment. Our tech is used to optimise business processes and provide a seamless route to jobs, internships and opportunities. We are a platform-as-a-service company that provides a national skills database.”
Skills Blackboard has received pre-seed funding from the recently launched EPF Tech Fund 2.
The fund identifies and rewards young, high-potential, innovative entrepreneurs to spur economic development in the country using technology.
Govender says the company is looking to scale and she is confident of attracting further investments.
“We are a local South African start-up. Whilst our angel and pre-seed funding has come from the EPF Tech Fund 2, we see a number of global companies entering the South African market.”
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